We understand that people differ from each other, not just by the way we look, but by many ways in which our brains work. This is good. I think a great strength of Humanity lays here. And I think for the communities of the future to be happier and more resilient, we need to study those differences and any dynamics they case in the relationships between people. This is something to use proactively in community building on many levels.

At the moment I am into the book “Make Your Sensitivity Work for You” by Alice Muir.

The book gives some practical advise on being a highly sensitive person – like many people are, me included. It is great that the book says there is nothing wrong with being sensitive and sensitivity comes as a part of a package of useful traits, often including also being intuitive, very perceptive, empathic, good listener, understanding, enthusiastic, interested in people, sympathetic, committed, a deep thinker, creative, imaginative, intelligent, reliable, trustworthy, good at seeing others point of view, aware of subtleties, different scenarios and consequences…

Time to pat yourself on the head if you are sensitive – except that (I think) there are many shades and varieties of sensitivity with different traits and the traits themselves could be on different stages of development. But, I guess, it is a trait of modern psychology – even if nowadays they acknowledge that there is big variety within “normal”, they still fail to sort the details. I wish there would be a chapter on Jungian cognitive functions here – they are an approximation of course, but better to have one than no analysis at all.

There’s however a chapter on what could make somebody sensitive which, on the level of gut feeling, seems wrong to me. This is big profound rewiring of the brain by events, some of which are not even very traumatic. Can this really happen, especially later in life?

As far as I can understand here is an ongoing debate about nature versus nurture in us humans. Steven Pinker fights the notion of the “blank slate” human in his book with the same name:

People are born a bit different to each other and, again, here lies our strength, not weakness.

An interesting perspective on the differences is in one in the Johnathan Fields’ podcast: the split between helpers and makers among us. I think it is a great observation. The source of so much struggle and guilt: “I should be helping someone, when I just want to create!” or “I should be making something while I just want to help! ”.

We all should stopbeating ourselves for what we are and concentrate on how can we work together for everyone’s benefit.

We are humans. All our friends, mentors and family are. And we are here, dominating this planet. If we never developed, would other intelligent species took over the planet one day? Could dolphins, elephants, crows, chimps, dogs or perhaps rats give rise to a new civilization? Would they be “gentler” with the Nature and each other than we have been? We can not know at the moment.

For all our sins, we are the only force so far which could potentially save life from a global disaster like an asteroid strike.

Wishing for our civilization to disappear, I think, is an immature way of thinking happening sometime withing environmentally aware community. I too might have been like this – when I was ten.

In the book “Ecovillage at Ithaca” (a useful record of an ecovillage development and a part of my ever growing list of potentially useful books for creating new ways of living)

Liz Walker starts with describing her young son’s attitude, his wish for humans to “just die of” because of species disappearing at an incredible rate. She herself, although shocked, could see his point, as “at the beginning of the 21st century, we face a world that is falling apart at the seams“…

Is it? Or we humans just intrinsically like tragedy, our media picks up on this and paint us a, alas, desirable picture of “our world … drenched in the blood of seemingly endless warfare” and “miserable living conditions for much of the world’s population“.

If we wont to build a real better future, we have to deal with facts, not the ever-changing media theater. Violence, disease and poverty are the enemies of our future. What has been happening to them?

First, I would recommend the well known Steven Pinker’s book

where he meticulously proves the diminishing of violence through the history and talks about the reasons for this.

Life is wonderful. One of its miracles is the ability to recover. There have been a series of devastating mass extinctions throughout the geologic history of our planet. In some cases up to 60 percent of species were gone. Of course, it took Nature from 20 to 100 million years to recover the biodiversity (see

for more information). We may argue, that the life would never evolve to be so inventive and resilient if not for those extinction events, but we don’t need another one. According to WWF at the moment we might be loosing between 0.01 and 0.1 percent of all species per year which is 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate. We took over the planet, this changed all the ecosystems… Bit since we realised what is happening we ought to change. It could be that the knowledge itself makes it impossible for humanity to avoid the coming change.

Living this change, this is the purpose of the Good New Town project. It has to have solid foundation: verifiable data. Doom and gloom might induce some people to act – for a while. Only complete honesty can sustain the movement.

So let’s question every piece of information coming to us, examine the evidence and try to accept the world as it is.

Often we can hear that it is the modern “civilized” humans that exploit and destroy the nature, while the indigenous cultures lived in good balance with the land for many generations. Was this always the rule? The way in which the latest extinction of megafauna happened suggest otherwise.

An analysis of the timing of Holarctic megafaunal extinctions and extirpations over the last 56,000 years has revealed a tendency for such events to cluster within interstadials, periods of abrupt warming, but only when humans were also present. Humans may have impeded processes of migration and recolonization that would otherwise have allowed the megafaunal species to adapt to the climate shift.[46] “

Stone age humans, as close to nature as anyone could be, were bringing the destruction as soon as they could, everywhere they spread. All our ancestors did it. Only then, when perhaps the easy prey was gone, the balance in new ecosystems eventually was established. That’s how Nature works. Any species suddenly received an advantage would spread till stopped by famine, predators and disease.

Only now, when our intelligence has grown enough, we started to think about future. We don’t want to spread till we have to starve because there’s no more resources. We want to study and save other species, even ones which have no nutritional or aesthetic value for us.

There’s no need to do human-bashing. We’ve been very “natural” so far in our desire to spread and conquer. Then our intelligence happened, completely naturally too. Perhaps other intelligent species will rise on this Earth later. We don’t really know if they are going to be gentle with their environment. For us, it is time to search for the new balance on the new level.

Alexandra Cook is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk